XML Formatter & Validator
Format, validate and beautify XML documents instantly in your browser
Instant XML formatting
Paste raw, minified or malformed XML and get a clean, indented document in milliseconds. Supports attributes, self-closing tags, comments and nested elements.
Built-in XML validator
Uses the browser's native DOMParser to validate XML syntax. Errors like missing closing tags, invalid characters or malformed attributes are caught immediately.
No data leaves your browser
All processing happens client-side in JavaScript. Your XML is never sent to a server — perfect for sensitive configuration files, API payloads and data exports.
Frequently asked questions about XML formatting
Everything about XML structure, validation and best practices
XML formatting (or pretty-printing) transforms compact or single-line XML into a human-readable structure with consistent indentation and line breaks. This is essential when working with configuration files (like Maven pom.xml or Spring beans), SOAP web services, RSS/Atom feeds, SVG files, or any data exchange format where readability and review matter.
In XML, an element with no children can be written as a self-closing tag (<tag/>) or with an explicit closing tag (<tag></tag>). Both are semantically identical. This formatter uses self-closing tags for empty elements (no child nodes, no text), which is the more concise convention and matches W3C XML recommendations.
XML and JSON both represent structured data but have different strengths. XML supports attributes, namespaces, comments, mixed content (text and elements together), and has a well-established schema validation ecosystem (XSD, RELAX NG). JSON is more compact, easier to parse in JavaScript, and dominant in REST APIs. XML remains the standard for SOAP, RSS, SVG, Microsoft Office formats, and many enterprise systems.
Minify XML when you need to reduce payload size for network transmission — for example in SOAP envelopes, embedded XML in HTML, or machine-to-machine data exchange where readability is not required. Minification strips all whitespace between tags, typically reducing file size by 15–40%. Always keep the formatted version for development; only minify for production or transport.